A heartwarming moment captured at the Longview Animal Care and Adoption Center in Longview, Texas, turned the shelter into a viral sensation overnight.
Shelter director Chris Kemper liked to take pictures around the office and often shared them on the shelter’s Facebook page.
One Thursday, he spotted vet tech Erin Dryden’s pet lamb acting funny in the hallway.
Erin adopted Ursula the lamb at birth, and they were very close. The other staff members loved seeing the happy little lamb following Erin around during the workday.
As Chris walked out of his office, he saw Ursula skipping along behind lead animal care technician Nina Allen, who was on her way to the surgical suite.
The very sight of the skipping lamb brought a smile to Chris’s face, and he wanted to share that happy visual with the shelter’s followers online. “She’s like a puppy, but she gets excited and she starts jumping,” Chris said. He started recording a video of Nina and Ursula dancing together and then uploaded it to Facebook with a disco jingle and lyrics spoofing the Whitney Houston hit “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
“I wanna dance with somebody, some baa baa baa body who loves me!” the caption read.
The video was in slow motion so that people could enjoy the lamb kicking up her heels. It was also hilarious watching Nina gamely jump into the air alongside her.
“Our thought was, ‘Let’s just post this. It will make some people laugh, and it keeps us in the Facebook cycle until the next morning,’” Chris explained. When he logged in the next morning, the video had already been viewed 2.8 million times on Facebook alone.
They were soon contacted by media outlets from all over the country, drawing even more attention to the shelter’s page.
At the time, the video had been viewed over 5 million times on Facebook, and Chris said they hoped the added traffic would result in more help for the animals they served. “We want people in driving distance — Shreveport, Tyler, Dallas, wherever — we want them to think, ‘Wow, I’m going to drive to that facility because they care about what they’re doing.’ That’s what we hope the outcome is.”
